UK
Britain is going through a difficult time, when its sustained ability to punch above its weight, economically and diplomatically, is ebbing. The end of irrational exuberance found the country ill at ease with itself, with rising inequalities and unhealthy nationalism, just when it needs to be fleet-footed in recognising that many of the traditional pillars of its strengths have changed. The need is to recognise other supports and partners and find a new common purpose after the pandemic. I live in hope.
identity
Tuesday 12th June 2012
With scottish independence in the air, identity is much discussed these days, and so I took that as a starting point in my monthly colomn, linking multi faceted identity to a multi cultural society, which is not always welcome, but really ought to be...
...and pipe and slippers
Friday 18th May 2012
Between 18 and around now, I have always been around 18. However, these last years I do seem to have become rather alarmingly settled, proof of which is here (23 january 2012) and in my intense pride at my first movie. Old friend wrote rather better on a similar theme.
blog goes global
Thursday 10th May 2012
Well, across greater manchester anyway, as four years after giving up my last regular spot (new europe), I may well have a new corner of the web that will be forever baron. My first foray, rather ironically given my increasingly armchair interest (30 april 2012) was on football...
big deal
Saturday 14th April 2012
Announced in the UK’s annual budget statement, manchester’s “city deal” is a big deal (here’s why). Been in the news too for other reasons, as has my cousin (see 17 november 2011) and my brother, who has recently struck out on his own and is doing very well. I continue to help others, edinburgh a while ago, and local government over the last months, with growth, my favourite topic
a new year resolution
Sunday 4th March 2012
I wrote recently in our community’s journal, shofar. It was basically about the tension between our altruistic or ideological and community do good selves, and our pragmatic, individualist or familial consumerist side, “can a lifetime of happiness be only in private pleasures of family and friends, of making and baking, of walking and talking...”
a bridge too near
Wednesday 22nd February 2012
We're leaving trafford for the last time after three wonderful years and... joining bridgewater, which also provides healthcare in trafford, as well as other parts of greater manchester, merseyside and cheshire. It's a new day, and a new challenge in a still new sector of community rather than hospital care (18 february 2012)...
another go at transformation
Monday 14th November 2011
Public services are excellent at talking transformation, less good at doing it. However steep decline in the availability of public funds, set to worsen, makes endless salami slicing in silos ultimately impossible. There may be a catalyst to an alternative approach, which in my view sees the provision of a public service as an investment, around which a mature state, in all its emanations, should be able to take a view as to return and risk, so bringing evidence and cost-benefit analysis to the fore as never before. That's what I spent my friday afternoon on
to (plan) b or not to b
Saturday 5th November 2011
An informative “breakfast briefing” I chaired looked less at a nominal “plan b” that everyone agreed would be the ideal way to go, and more at whether, given the uk’s huge debts and intense global macroeconomic twitchiness, it could be carried out without dire consequences. Conclusions, if such they were, that unfortunately growth spending needs carving from current spend, and that there’s nothing new under the sun, as this excellent video showed...
doom and gloom, still
Thursday 13th October 2011
I donned my white coat today to present a quarterly economic outlook to our “LEP” which is the uk rediscovering that there is virtue in having business people sort-of help run a city. The main messages were remorselessly gloomy, with the local news picking me up on the fabled north south divide, youth unemployment, reaction to the euro deal and, again, unemployment; and again. They were also taken with the rather more optimistic item I did on our economic advisory panel, another on manchester outperforming the uk, on exports, on growth and then on the over 50s...
manufacturing: of modest criticality
Friday 7th October 2011
Manchester was built on manufacturing, which turned a small town into a global driver of the industrial revolution, but it’s been mostly downhill for the last 60 years or so. Now, it seems to have bottomed out and the slow move up the value curve and towards more service-based activity, pepped up by sterling’s devaluation, gives hope for increased value, if not for employment...
still banging on about china
Tuesday 30th August 2011
Latest publication on this, with an honourable mention to brief local piece a couple of weeks ago. China is not for everyone. It is, though, the biggest economic prize on the planet, and the cities, firms and countries that crack the world’s fastest growing economy will be the success stories of tomorrow...
what might the euro (crisis) mean on the street ?
Thursday 28th July 2011
How does the euro crisis affect the businessperson on the street ? The euro area is manchester's largest market, so if they sneeze, we catch a cold - less people buying our companies' goods and services, less investment coming in...